


The Restaurant On Hosnian Prime

by OverconfidentFanficWriter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: And Those Who Would Really Like To Ignore Them, And is still getting used to just being able to eat what he wants and when, But Get Caught Up Anyway, Ezra has Opinions, Old Friends, Politics, Restaurants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 13:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverconfidentFanficWriter/pseuds/OverconfidentFanficWriter
Summary: My entry for the Rebels Zine, for whoever couldn't afford it. Almost thirty years after the old war, and with another looming on the horizon, two old friends meet up for a chat about their lives. The more things change, the more they stay the same.





	The Restaurant On Hosnian Prime

It was almost sunset on Hosnian Prime, the last dying light struggling to be seen through the vast cityscape, and Senator Leia Organa was still waiting for Ezra Bridger to show.

Perhaps she had spent too much time in politics. If a person arrived late to a diplomatic function of any sort, it meant something. If a person refused to show, or came early, or claimed illness, that also meant something. Even a setting as informal as this, a well-to-do but not necessarily elite restaurant with a lovely view of the river and cuisine fit for hundreds of species, the rules would still have been followed. Ezra might have had some pressing matter to deal with, like a droid fighting ring or a lonely litter of loth-cats, and simply forgot the whole thing. She wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or envious.

She was waving off a waiter for the fourth time when he finally stomped into the restaurant, and to her relief he was clean if a little mussed. He shuffled into the booth, ignoring the waiter’s protests and muttering apologies to him and her. “Sorry, so sorry, excuse me. Sorry Leia, there was a kid wandering around the square alone and I had to find her parents.” 

Ezra plopped down on his seat, looked her right in the eye, and said "Princess, you know I love you, but your hairdo looks like a monong's behind."

She couldn't help it. She laughed. After so long in the Senate with measured political discourse, carefully layering subtext and text into every word and action, the bluntness hit her off center and sent her chortling in a very unprincesslike way.

"What? It does!" He said defensively. "I mean, I know it's important but...." she held up a hand, still laughing, and it was a while before she could speak again.

"No, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. It's just....very refreshing to hear someone who says so." He grinned, clearly glad to see her relax.

"You're old, Leia. Might as well admit it and relish in it." He drank deeply from the wine that the exasperated waiter had finally managed to put down. "I certainly have."

"I'm aware." She said, eying him knowingly. "Tell me, what did you call the Senator from Coruscant? An overgrown mynock?"

Ezra seized a complementary muja slice with his fingers, scandalizing an elderly Rodian couple nearby. "I had much worse insults in store. Empire-worshipping fools tripping along their own power."

Leia sighed, reality setting in. "You'd think that after everything we went through...."

"Everything we went through, Leia, not them. For most people, the Empire wasn't that bad. People can endure and excuse any crime as long as it happens to someone else, and most often those other people were the wrong sort anyway. Too poor, too radical, too different from us. If they'd just existed in the proper way they'd be fine. And if you were afraid of their power, if you ever realized that nothing justified it....well, that fear fades with time, and soon you can just say 'oh but we'll be different'. "

Leia was started to understand why Ezra preferred beasts to beings. Perhaps he had too good a grip on both.

"Ah well. The more things stay the same, the more they change." Ezra said. "There's a billion trillion little wheels turning away in the universe and you never know which ones'll intersect which way.” Noticing the waiter for the first time, he smiled. “I’ll take ronto noodles with a side of fresh meiloorun.” The waiter scurried off.

Leia smiled. "You're saying hope for a miracle?"

"I'm saying we've gotten ourselves over 25 years of peace and toppled an Empire. I'm saying that when I was 14 I and many others believed the Empire was too powerful to be toppled, the hundreds of years of slowly increasing tyranny too deeply embedded to be removed, and yet our children have grown in peace and freedom. To be honest, it's miraculous that it was us that freed the galaxy, and not our descendants." He smiled fondly, reminiscing of past years. "It'll take longer than a single generation for our government to settle. And you and me, we're only middle-aged. Our time is only half over."

"Maybe for you." She didn't like it, but she had to break the news before he went much further. "Ezra, I'm retiring from the Senate."

She didn't know what she expected, but it sure wasn't a broad, delighted smile, like she'd surprised him with an acklay egg. "Really? That's wonderful!"

She was puzzled. "Didn't you just say our time wasn't over?"

"All the more reason to take advantage of it. You've spent your entire life being what others required of you. You were a politician because you were a princess, you were a general because your parents were rebels, you had Jedi training because of your brother. How long has it been since you were something you chose, Leia? From the sound of it, too damn long."

She sighed. Of course he'd take it this way. "Ezra, I....I don't want to leave the Senate. I'm just tired of fighting and seeing it all get worse."

"I know. But you've got people to take up the fight for you. Idealists who'll give the movement energy, politicians to give it guidance, old Rebels like you and..." His face fell, and he added the last words grudgingly. "Ms. Holdo....to help fight against Imperial ideals."

Leia stifled a laugh. True, Amilyn was not an easy person to get along with, but Ezra had moved from a sort of indifference to an active grudge when she'd made the mistake of mishandling his animals. To this day, nothing would sway him from claiming that the little chaakrabbit was entirely within her rights to bite a stranger picking her up unsafely and Amilyn "shouldn't go around treating living beings like cute little dolls she can handle however she pleases".

“You haven’t seen how bad it’s gotten. We’re all at each other’s throats no matter what happens. The Populists want to bog us down in even more bureaucracy, the Centrists want to restore the things that led to Empire, those in the middle are getting fewer and farther between…” She sighed. “It’s going to rip itself apart.”

Ezra sighed. “That’s how it’s always been, Leia. What changed?”

“A new leader for the Centrists.” She replied. “Ransolm Casterfo.”

Ezra paused for a moment to let the waiter bring in his noodles, thanking him with a smile. When he spoke again, his voice was steady. “Describe him.”

Ezra might disdain politics in general but she knew that he kept a sharp eye on the Senate and anything that could rebound on his beloved homeworld. He didn’t want to know Casterfo’s policies or personality. He wanted Leia’s assessment.

“Brilliant. Charismatic. Young. Lots of big ideas with the barest minimum of good sense to give the illusion that they’ll work, but no real legs to stand on. Genuinely believes in what he’s saying, which is that the Empire would have worked if it just had a different leader. That there were “heroes on both sides”.” She thought for a bit. “Grew up in a Riosan camp under the personal attention of Darth Vader.”

Ezra finished a bite of his noodles. “I can see why you’re worried.”

“What makes it worse is that I’ve seen him, worked with him. He’s not some diehard fanatic or ex-Imperial. He knows how bad the Empire was. He wants the Empire returned but….he wants it because he thinks it would be better for the people. I don’t understand.”

“Well, of course. A diehard Imperial fanatic would never pass in the Senate. His backstory removes him from the Empire, and his charisma makes his beliefs more…..palatable.” There was teeth in the last word. 

“The worlds in the Senate are already, by and large, in a place of privilege and insulation from the true Empire. When it was war-time, it was easier to swallow the idea that Republic senators were leading the charge, if only for their money and support. But to most worlds, especially ex-Separatist worlds...they haven’t forgotten what the Republic did, and they haven’t forgiven Mon Mothma for reinstating it as before.”

There was no serenity in his tone this time, and he had to visibly calm himself, slicing his meiloorun like it had done him a great personal wrong.

“Chancellor Mothma did what she could to make sure….” Leia began, but she was cut off.

“Chancellor Mothma wanted to restore her Republic, and she did. She restored the same Republic that made itself into the Empire. The Republic that was so mired in gridlock that they gave up their freedom to help their people. The Republic that held itself together with a cult of personality, first centered on Palpatine, then her, and will sell itself to whoever’s next. It was stupid and short sighted and we’re all paying the price, and….” He stopped himself, breathing slowly, trying to calm himself down, then kept eating.

Leia waited for a moment. “You still haven’t forgiven her, have you?”

Ezra picked up another forkful of his noodles and ate. He snatched up a muja slice and chewed. Leia kept waiting.

“Senator Mothma did all she could to help my planet, and I will always be grateful to her for it, even if she failed. My exile was my own choice. I can’t even say I can’t see why she remade the Republic:, she wanted peace instead of war, and this was how she thought it could work. But….she did it wrong. She didn’t listen.”

“To whom?”

He gestured with his fork a bit, thinking it over. “You. I hoped she would listen to you. And all the others, the ex-Separatists, the extremists, who saw the flaws in our system but were ignored. And now we have people getting desperate, getting greedy, looking for an easy way out just as they did at the beginning.”

Leia sighed. “I would have thought that after what he suffered at the hands of….Vader ...Ransolm would know better. I was surprised to learn of his past.”

"I’m not. Growing up under Vader, I imagine he truly believes in monsters. That Vader and the Emperor and the others were unnatural and evil by nature, and no one could become so. It’s easier to blame some sort of shadowy conspiracy of elites or a mysterious force than admit that bad things happen because ordinary people can do horrible things to each other.” Ezra barked a harsh, bitter laugh, the kind found at bedsides and battlefields, as he picked up another slice of bread. “Maybe he should have met a few more of those simple Imperial men he loves, those “heroes on both sides”. I certainly met plenty on the streets, doing their best to keep crime down by breaking children’s fingers for stealing trash.”

“You have a very cynical view of people.” Leia noted, picking up some bread herself.

“People are people.” Ezra replied. “They’ve all got layers, some good, some bad, some in-between. Only difference is which one they show and when.” He finished up his noodles in a quick slurp, gaining the attention of half the restaurant. Leia’s glared back at them and they backed off.

The sun was fully down by now, and the restaurant was starting to fill up. Less privacy was not good. “So, what do you suggest?”

Ezra sat back, patting his stomach a bit, which had grown over the past decade. After so long on the streets, scrounging with Rebellion, and then struggling again in his exile, a full belly was still a wonder to him.

“I suggest that you watch out for your friend, and yourself. He sounds like he genuinely believes in what he’s doing, and he’ll get others to believe it too, and who knows, he might even listen to reason and accept compromise if it achieves his goals. He’s either the most dangerous of them all, or the perfect target for those more dangerous than him.”

Leia looked around the restaurant, making sure no one was near, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Then it’s true? The Empire’s stirring?”

Ezra breathed, slow and deep, then leaned forward, whispering as low as possible. “I don’t know if it’s the Empire, but something is stirring. Something’s about to break, and the Senate might be part of it but it’s not just there. Luke’s hidden the Padawans, and accelerated their training. We might need them soon.”

Ben was 24 years old, a man grown. She could not stop him, hell, she’d all but guaranteed his fate as a warrior when she gave him to Luke all those years ago. But Leia could not repress the dread deep in her chest, the dread that she would fail, that peace would fail, and her son would be another soldier in a war she had failed to finish.

“Visions can be misinterpreted.” Leia said. “We might still have time to find the source of all this, turn it around.”

Ezra nodded. “Of course. That’s why I’m going back to the Unknown Regions, and back to the hunt for the presence. We’ll find it and rout it out, if we can. I might be worrying you over nothing. But if whatever’s coming, we’ll face it.” He smiled, reaching out for her across the table “We did it before, didn’t we?”

Leia smiled and covered his hand with her own. It was a shame that they’d only met once during the war. Ezra always had a way of comforting people when they were at their lowest. “Yes, we did.”

His grin broadened, and he sat back up. “Well, with that settled, I haven’t had the chance to dine in a place like this for a while so I’m gonna exploit the fact that I’m not paying. Waiter!” Ezra yelled across the restaurant, and the waiter rushed over, eager to hush the barbarian. “I’d like a slice of feen pie, please.”

The waiter hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s advisable, sir. It’s meant for Twi’leks.” 

“I’ve had it before.” Ezra reassured him, with that subtle look in his eye that only Leia could detect. Leia rolled her eyes as the waiter scurried away.

“If you throw up, I’m not paying for another.” Leia snipped. “And keep your foot off the table this time.”

“Come on, Leia.” He said, compromising by putting his foot on the bench. “If you can’t break a few dumb rules, what’s the point of being old?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Wookieepedia for providing the food names, and thanks to Carrie Fisher for her "baboon's ass" comment which inspired Ezra's joke here. Rest in Peace.


End file.
